Page 17 - Desert Oracle Nov 2018

This device was indeed groundbreaking: Soon following the
ceremony, over 20 new patents for assistive devices for people with

disabilities, citing Blount, were filed with the U.S. government.

Blount was not yet done inventing, however. As she continued to

teach writing skills to veterans and others with disabilities, she began
to pay attention to how handwriting reflected a personʼs changing

state of physical health. In 1968, Blount published a technical paper

on her observations titled “Medical Graphology,” marking her

transition into a new career in which she quickly excelled.

After the publication of her paper, she began consulting with the
Vineland Police Department, where she applied her observations on

handwriting and health to examining handwritten documents to

detect forgeries. By 1972, she had become the chief document

examiner at the Portsmouth police department; in 1976, she applied

for at the FBI. When they turned her down, she again turned her
sights overseas, finding a temporary home for her talents at Scotland

Yard. In 1977, at 63 years old, she began training in the Document

Division of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory,

making her the first black woman to do so.

When Blount returned to the states, she went into business for herself.
She continued to work with police departments as an expert
handwriting consultant and was active in law enforcement

organizations like the International Association of Forensic Sciences
and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.
She offered her expertise in handwriting to museums and historians

by reading, interpreting and determining the authenticity of historical
documents, including Native American treaties and papers relating to
the slave trade and the Civil War.

In 2008, Blount returned to that one-room schoolhouse where it all

began. She found nothing left of it but some burned down ruins.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/woman-who-made…edium=email&utm_term=0_f5693aed98-a1a5a8d517-114324049